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Nairobi, Kenya, June 9, 2012 – TIME's Africa correspondent writes from
the front lines in war-ravaged Somalia, where an African Union offensive
against al-Shabaab is offering a tenuous glimpse of progress
We drive west out of Mogadishu, Somalia, in a convoy of three African
Union armored personnel carriers, mounted with three heavy machine guns.
No building seems untouched by bullet holes; many have collapsed, thorn
trees growing through their ruins, their stone guts spilling out into
the street. On all sides, in the rubble and on open patches of ground,
are domed brushwood-and-rag shelters in which 200,000 refugees have
lived since fleeing to the city during last year’s famine.
One yellow wedding-cake villa leans crazily backward, its back wall
crumpled underneath it, a radio mast on its roof pointing off to the
side. “Al-Shabaab destroyed it,” says Ugandan army Colonel Paddy Ankunda.
“It belonged to a supporter of the government.” A few minutes later we
reach a checkpoint manned by a militia allied to that government, known
as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). A minibus approaches and,
sensing the militiamen will want a bribe to let him pass, the driver
makes to keep going. A militiaman opens fire with his AK-47 and shoots a
female passenger in the leg. After a brief delay, the minibus is allowed
to take the woman to a hospital. “Terrible,” says Ankunda, looking on.
“They just know how to shoot, that’s all. They don’t know they’re
supposed to protect people.”
If this were anywhere else, our trip would be a tour of a failed state
and a humanitarian disaster. But in Somalia, what we’re seeing is
progress. A few months ago, our drive would have been impossible: the
west of the city was plagued with guerrilla attacks by fighters from the
al-Qaeda-allied al-Shabaab. Our destination, Afgoye, a town 30 km
southwest of the city, was unreachable even two weeks ago: formerly an
al-Shabaab stronghold, Ugandan and Burundian troops from the African
Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) fought their way into the town in
pitched battles at the end of May, killing 60 al-Shabaab fighters. Their
advance has been matched by gains by Ethiopian troops farther west,
around the city of Baidoa, and to the south, where Kenyan troops are
gradually advancing north. Military success has been followed by
economic and political revival in Mogadishu. Good rain means that while
hundreds of thousands of Somalis are still malnourished and depend on
food aid, a cataclysm on the same scale as last year, in which 150,000
people died, will not be repeated.
Expatriate Somalis are fueling a building boom that has seen real estate
prices triple in nine months. The streets — if not yet entirely peaceful
— are full of stalls and traffic. Even the beach is crowded on weekends.
Meanwhile Somali clan elders must choose members of a new National
Constituent Assembly by June 20, which must in turn adopt a new
constitution by July 2 and a new parliament by July 15. The new
parliament will then elect a new President who will form his government
by Aug. 20, the day the TFG will be abolished. Though many of the old
warlords are still in Mogadishu and are expected to feature in the new
parliament and government, so far they appear cowed by AMISOM’s vow to
be as intolerant of a return to clan violence as it is of Islamist
jihad.
After 20 years of civil war that brought epic destruction, intermittent
famine and enough lawlessness to fuel a 21st century surge in piracy, a
fully fledged revival in Somalia will take decades. Fundamental to that
will be something that cannot be built, bought, donated or won by
fighting: a rejection of the all-too-commonly held view that the best
way to achieve goals is with a gun. But there are still valuable lessons
to draw from the progress so far. An African force is doing far better
at fixing an African problem than countless Western interventions, armed
or otherwise. (Though at huge sacrifice: more than a thousand AMISOM
troops have been killed.) With AMISOM and Somalia’s political change
entirely paid for by the West, it presents a far more successful and
cheaper model of the war (in terms of lives and money saved) than, say,
Afghanistan or Iraq. Finally, even after being a byword for catastrophe
for more than a generation, no country in Africa deserves, as has
happened to so many in the past, to be written off. Even in Somalia, it
turns out, hope didn’t die.
Source: TIME
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